Chichester raise glass to Becks win and top spot

Chichester’s longest trip of the season so far - to Beckenham ended in their seventh win from seven ... and they had the added bonus of going top of London one south.

They were without several experienced players with Richard Adams stepping in as skipper in place of Ben Polhill.

It was a tough bruising encounter and the Blues had to show grit and determination to come away with the bonus-point 26-11 victory.

In bright sunshine Chi were out of the blocks quickly and swift hands releasing Adams out wide to scorch through, rounding to give himself the easy conversion.

Beckenham came back hard and took the game to the Blues. Every time the away side got forward they were pegged back by penalties.

The Blues became frustrated by the constant infringements at the ruck and big prop Phil Veltom took the law into his own hands and was sinbinned for ten minutes.

Beckenham slotted a penalty soon after to make it 7-3. But Chi were looking dangerous with ball in hand.

With 30 minutes gone, Adams again showed his class to ghost through the smallest of gaps to step past the last defender and a conversion made it 14-3.

Beckenham had also had a man sent to the bin. The match was marred by a series of no-armed tackles, one of which led to Bond receiving a nasty blow to the head. Both he and his tackler left the field.

A combination of dogged defence and poor decisions prevented the Blues adding to their score and Becks captilised on another penalty to make it 14-8 at the break.

Squally rain made handling tricky. The game became scrappy but strong defence by Bentall and some excellent cover defence from Hutchinson shut down Becks’ threat.

Golds was having a solid afternoon and generated a couple of 30m line breaks but the last pass went to ground.

An excellent forward surge saw Goldie emerge with the ball to crash over close to the line for 19-6.

Baffling penalties killed any pressure the Blues could build with Bentall sin-binned for blocking from a tap penalty.

Beckenham reacted quickly to another penalty to score a well worked try. But Chi’s pack leader Moses Kasujja - man of the match - rallied his troops with a series of powerful drives creating havoc in the yellow defence and another powerful surge put Bentall into space.

Showing power and deceptive pace he smashed past three defenders to score the bonus-point try with Adams striking the ball superbly to take the extras.

One great Blues break was called back for a forward pass to stun the visiting supporters.

Billy Toone burst clear of the defence and jinked his way to five metres from the line but another head-high no-arm challenge left him dazed.

Blues director of rugby Paul Colley said: “This was a big challenge - we had a pretty young team out including two teenagers so overall we were very pleased with the result.

“The performance wasn’t our best but Beckenham laid down a physical challenge and for our guys to dig in and get the bonus point was a significant achievement.”